Albert Pujols' pinch-hit grand slam backs fellow 40-something Adam Wainwright's gem for St. Louis Cardinals

ST. LOUIS — Albert Pujols launched a pinch-hit grand slam and drove in five runs, Adam Wainwright pitched seven sharp innings and the St. Louis Cardinals routed the Colorado Rockies 13-0 Thursday for a three-game sweep.

«We're playing right now, I think the way that we were expecting ourselves to play early in the year,» Pujols said. «We didn't, but we had some glimpses here and there. Now we're playing the best baseball we have played all year long.»

Wainwright called Pujols «incredible.»

«He looks the same as when he left to me,» Wainwright said. «This is what he's supposed to look like, here this stadium, doing these things.»

Albert Pujols' grand slam Thursday was his 690th career HR, six shy of tying Alex Rodriguez for 4th on MLB's all-time HR list:

According to Elias Sports Bureau, the Cardinals are the first team in big league history to have a player at least 40 years old hit a grand slam and another at least 40 to pitch seven shutout innings in the same game. Pujols is 42, 2 years older than Wainwright.

The NL Central-leading Cardinals won their fourth in a row and sent Colorado to its fifth straight loss. St. Louis has won 12 of its last 13 home games and has taken 12 straight from the Rockies at Busch Stadium.

Pujols hit his 690th career home run, connecting off Austin Gomber and capping a five-run third that made it 10-0. It was Pujols' 16th career grand slam — his first as a pinch hitter — and it moved him into a tie with Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Dave Kingman for 10th-most slams of all time.

He became the first player to hit a pinch hit grand slam within the first three innings of a game since the Yankees' Bobby Murcer on July 25, 1971, against the Brewers

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said went with the